by Tracey Hecht
“Oh no! Dawn!” Tobin cried.
The scorpion’s eyes gleamed. Its tail shone with a drip of venom. This was it: Dawn was down. A perfect target.
Bismark jumped up in alarm, his arms waving wildly. And then—plop!—something slipped from the fold of his flap. The sugar glider’s eyes widened and his mouth twisted into a mischievous grin as he picked up the object from the ground.
“Step aside, scorpy!” he yelled. “No one swings their tail at my true love but moi!” With a demented whoop, Bismark flapped forward and slid between Dawn and the scorpion. Then he uncurled his fist and revealed the berry he’d taken from the lemurs. “To use in an act of true heroism,” he said, beaming, “just as I had always imagined!”
“Bismark, what is that?” asked Tobin. “What are you doing?”
The sugar glider held up the berry, dangling it in front of his mouth.
Dawn’s eyes widened in recognition. “Wait, Bismark!” she shouted. “You don’t know—”
“Never fear, mon amour! If anyone can handle a little sugar, it’s moi!” the glider cried, and he bit down on the fruit—skin, flesh, pit and all—with a loud crunch.
Everyone stared at Bismark, anxious to see the berry’s effect. Even the scorpion could not help but ogle with all eight of its dark, beady eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
Wondering.
But nothing happened.
Bismark tilted his head from side-to-side in confusion—and then…
“Mon dieu!”
Bismark felt his body buzz, tingle, and jump. Then he extended both flaps and shot upward into the night. And so did the scorpion. Bismark had grabbed him right by the tail with his back paws!
Tobin and Dawn stared up at the wild flying creatures, dumbfounded.
“Bismark, drop the scorpion!” Dawn shouted. “Come down!”
But Bismark’s only reply was a loud, triumphant battle cry. Despite the scorpion’s writhing and twitching, the sugar glider whirled and twirled in the air, his flaps vibrating with such tremendous speed that he was bounding about like a hummingbird.
“Bismark!” Dawn called. “What are you—?”
“Never fear, mon amour! This sugar glider was born to fly!” Bismark shouted, and then, angling his flaps to one side, he caught a gust of wind and shot across the crater.
“Regardez, everyone!” he cried. “By all that flaps, it’s the true shooting star of the night!”
Bismark zipped, zoomed, and looped through the air, relishing his newfound speed. The scorpion hissed and snipped, but he dangled helplessly behind. And then, as Bismark hurtled toward the crater’s rim, he saw it: a wisp of fur. A gleam of orange. Iris!
“Oh là là! So you’re not that fast after all, muchacha!” Bismark called.
Iris looked wildly toward the skies, her orange eyes first squinting in confusion, then widening in terror.
“Time to say bye-bye, aye-aye!” Bismark shouted. “Uno…dos…three!” On his own count, he let go of the squirming scorpion. Down, down, fell the glower: through the air, past the treetops, right toward Iris’s scalp. The aye-aye’s bony fingers flew up to shield herself, but she was too late.
“Ayeeeeeeeeee!” She let out an ear-splitting shriek as the scorpion’s venomous stinger struck the top of her head. Her orange eyes bulged. Then, she desperately spun in a circle until she found the path that led to her cave on the other side of the woods.
“The blue flowers…” she gasped. Iris took a step toward the cave and extended a trembling hand.
But her limbs quickly grew weak and her arm fell back to her side. Her eyes rolled up into her head. And then, in a single, swaying movement, Aye-Aye Iris collapsed to the ground in a small, motionless heap.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE REAL AYE-AYE IRIS
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?” Perched a safe distance away, Bismark was cautiously poking at the motionless aye-aye with a stick.
Up above, the moon had faded, and the sky had shifted from purple to pink. Tobin’s mist had cleared in the early morning, leaving the air cool and crisp. For the first time in three nights, the three friends felt nothing but calm and silence as they sat at the base of the fallen star and waited for Iris to stir.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sugar glider poked at the aye-aye’s shoulder. “Hey, muchacha, doesn’t this tap-tap-tappy rhythm stir your senses? Wake up already!” When Iris still didn’t budge, Bismark aimed the stick at her face and tickled one of her hairy nostrils.
Suddenly, her nose twitched and her jaw extended, circled, and closed, like she was chewing a tough piece of meat. Then she let out a mucousy snort and belched.
Tobin scrunched his face in disgust. Even Dawn lifted an eyebrow and covered her mouth with her tail.
“Oh mon dieu.” Bismark rolled his eyes. “Even in rest, she is gruesome, grotesque, ofensivo to the soul!” The sugar glider traced his stick down Iris’s gangly arm and used it to lift one of her long, black claws. Then, with a sudden jolt, Iris clenched her fist, splintering Bismark’s stick. He leaped backward with a yelp.
“Did you see that? The aye-aye’s still trying to skewer me!” he shouted, waving the stub of his stick around wildly. “En garde!”
Iris opened her two bloodshot eyes. In the dim light of sunrise, their normally orange blaze had dulled to a lifeless brown, and her hair looked wispy and gray. Slowly, her pupils traced her surroundings, then, with a grunt, she lifted an arm and gestured into the distance. “Lemurs! Oh, my lemurs,” she croaked.
The Brigade spun around. The lemurs had recovered from Tobin’s powerful spray. There were hundreds of them, and the Brigade gasped at the sight of them all approaching at once.
As they drew closer, the aye-aye’s gaze grew more steady, more confident. “I knew you’d come,” she whispered, the ends of her lips curling up. “Just in time.” Iris gave a faint grin. Then, with her arm still outstretched, she lifted her long, knobby finger and swung it to and fro.
But the lemurs were fixed on the aye-aye’s face, not her hand.
“My finger!” called Iris weakly. “Aye-Aye Iris commands you to look at my finger!”
The lemurs did not obey. They had learned her trick, and they shielded their eyes with their paws. The only part of their furry faces left exposed were the defiant, resentful scowls they wore on their mouths.
Iris’s eyes darted frantically over the grimacing herd. With her brow twisted in pain and with shaking limbs, she struggled to sit up. “Aye-Aye Iris commands your allegiance!” she called, mustering her strongest voice. “Aye-Aye Iris commands you!”
“They will not obey you,” declared Dawn, stepping in front of the aye-aye.
Iris lifted her hands to her head and combed her fingers through her ragged hair. Her orange eyes widened as she felt the welt on her head where the scorpion had stung her. “The poison!” She began to breathe heavily, and her chest rose and fell with panic. “Where are my flowers?” she shrieked. “Someone bring Aye-Aye Iris a flower!”
“The flowers were never yours,” Dawn said evenly.
Iris opened her mouth to reply. But then, with a long sigh, she bowed her head and clutched her hands to her heart. When she looked back up at the fox, her dull orange eyes shone with dampness. “You…you don’t understand…Aye-Aye Iris…” she began. “She…she’s going to…die.”
Bismark lifted a flap to his forehead and rolled his bulbous eyes. “Mon dieu,” he sighed. “So dramatic! I know I may look large and ferocious,”—he paused to flex his scrawny muscles—“but this marsupial isn’t a murderer!”
Iris twisted her neck in confusion.
“We found the blue flowers in the cave and gave them out while you slept,” Tobin explained, taking a step toward the aye-aye. “Look.” The pangolin smiled and gestured out. Iris followed the line of his claw. Circling the rim of the crater were the woylies, band
icoots, kangaroos, and bilbies. Each and every one of them looked healthy. Cured. “We gave them to everyone,” Tobin said, “including you.”
“Si,” confirmed Bismark. “Popped one right in your mouth—your drooling mouth—while you snored.”
Iris’s jaw fell slack. “I…I—”
“You didn’t deserve one!” An angry shout rose from the circle of lemurs, cutting off the aye-aye.
Another voice rang out from the lemurs: “You controlled us! Used us!”
The group murmured in agreement. Then they drew in, closer and closer to Iris, until they were crowded around her.
“You’re dangerous!”
“Devious!”
“Delirious!”
Iris groaned and shrank in upon herself as the lemurs continued to clamor around her. Soon, all the lemurs were joining in the fray.
“Enough.” Dawn’s voice brought the animals to attention. “This rage will get us nowhere. What we want is an explanation.”
Reluctantly, the lemurs backed off, and the aye-aye began to stir. A flash of anger crossed her face. But then it passed, and she slumped back into the dirt and sighed.
“It’s no use,” she croaked. “These attacks, this hate. It’s all Aye-Aye Iris has known.” Iris sighed. “No matter what she does to help, no matter what she says, no one believes her. Animals look at Iris and think she’s crazy. All anyone can see are her weird long fingers, her ugly orange eyes, her strange crooked teeth.” The aye-aye’s gaze fell to the ground. “No one sees the real Iris.”
“Hold up just a tic, muchacha,” said Bismark. “You did all this because you want a makeover? Why not just clip your nails, trim that fur? No need to go all cucaracha on us and team up with those sinister scorpions!” His eyes narrowed. “By the way, I know those evil critters disappeared back underground—frightened by my impressive power of flight, no doubt—” Bismark beamed, “—but if they ever show their eight-eyed faces again…by my flaps—I’ll punt them straight to the moon!” Bismark reeled back his small leg and kicked. “Turn them into real star creatures,” he snarled.
“No,” the defeated aye-aye said, rising to her feet at last. “You can’t do that. It’s not their fault,” she sputtered. “They’re…they’re innocent.” Iris took a deep breath. “They didn’t know what they were doing when they poisoned those pomelos. Some of them had never even been above ground until the star-stone rattled the earth!”
The aye-aye lowered her gaze. “It’s Aye-Aye Iris … she took advantage,” she whispered. “Once the scorpions realized the harm they had caused, they wanted to fix it. They wanted to cure the sick animals. So they asked Aye-Aye Iris what to do. And she.…” Iris paused and nervously twirled her long fur. “She told them that the only way to undo their damage was to bring her all the blue flowers. And then when you went after the flowers, too… well, it was perfect. Aye-Aye Iris told them that you were the evil ones. That you didn’t want the sick animals to have the cure. That you were trying to steal the flowers.” Iris bowed her head in shame.
Dawn, Tobin, and Bismark stood silent with shock.
“But…but…” Bismark sputtered. “But they were about to sting me! They were about to sting my lovely Dawn!”
“Iris knows, she knows!” wailed the aye-aye, suddenly bursting into tears. “She told them to strike! They thought you were evil. They would have never tried to hurt you if Iris didn’t tell them to.” The aye-aye’s long-fingered hands rose up to cover her face.
“Oh my.” Tobin sighed. “Is that really true? Those poor scorpions are innocent?”
“Visitors in an unfamiliar land,” murmured the fox. She shook her head side to side. “In a way, they really were aliens, weren’t they?”
“Mon dieu!” Bismark took up his stick and waved it at the aye-aye again. “You sinister señorita! Taking advantage of those poor little glow-bulbs!”
Iris’s body shook as the tears streamed down her face. “It’s true! It’s true!” she sobbed. “But this was the only way Iris could earn everyone’s trust!” She turned to the other creatures. “It would’ve worked, right? All the animals that were never nice to Iris—once she had the cure, everyone would talk to her! Be kind to her. You would have been…you would have been her friends!”
The lemurs shifted uneasily.
“Gosh, Iris,” one of them whispered. “We never thought of it that way.”
“By all that glides, how could anyone be so insecure?” Bismark cried. The sugar glider looked sideways at the meteor’s shiny surface. Catching a glimpse of his reflection, he quickly smoothed some hair over his bald spot. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “As I was saying,” he went on, “if you want to be loved, all you have to do is be yourself! Besides, with a little trim, a long bath, and a friendly smile, you wouldn’t make such a scary amiga at all.”
The aye-aye blinked. “Really?” she asked.
Tobin nodded and smiled.
“You mean…” Iris took a step forward. “You don’t think my fur is foul?”
“No,” said the fox. “Not at all.”
Iris scratched her head. “You don’t think my teeth are appalling?”
“Of course not!” responded the pangolin.
Iris looked down at her hands. “You’re not repulsed by my long fingers?” she asked.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” The sugar glider held up a flap. “Let’s not get carried away now. One step at a time, my little cucaracha.”
Dawn smiled. “It’s okay to be different, Iris. In fact, it’s good.” The fox turned toward the lemurs. “It’s our differences that make us unique. They define who we are.”
“Oui! And besides, muchacha, everyone is a little strange! Take my smelly amigo, here,” said Bismark, throwing a flap around Tobin. “Tell me, do you know anyone who can toot like my scaly friend?”
“And what about the scorpions?” The pangolin smiled. “They live underground, they have those dreadful claws, and they glow in the moonlight! That might seem strange to some.”
“Yes,” Dawn agreed, “I suppose we’re all a little bit strange.”
“Well si,” said Bismark, “except for moi, of course. I’m just strangely attractive.” Bismark gazed back into the meteor and admired his reflection with a crooked grin.
Tobin giggled. Dawn laughed. Even the aye-aye chuckled.
Suddenly, the early morning seemed to brighten with a remarkable light. “Look!” cried Tobin. “Another shooting star!”
“Mon dieu! Hey, pangolino, try not to say your wish aloud this time!” Bismark said. “Even if we all know what you’re thinking. More pomelos for all, correctomundo?”
Tobin’s mouth curled in a bashful smile, remembering his first wish on the fallen star.
“But this time, it will come true,” Dawn said. “The trees will grow more pomelos. And when they fall, we’ll plant their seeds here, where the scorpions made their mounds. Before long, this crater will be a new grove.”
The fox nudged one of the clods beneath her feet—and it nudged back. All around, new, small mounds started to form. The scorpions were returning, digging their way to the surface. Rising to join the other nocturnals.
Dawn gave a friendly nod to the eight-eyed creatures as they poked their heads above ground. Then she turned to Iris.
The aye-aye was looking up, the early morning light filling her face, reflecting her newfound hope. The pangolin placed a gentle claw on her back. Bismark wrapped a flap around Tobin.
”Yes,” said Dawn, “we’ll plant a new grove—one fresher and richer than any other.” The fox surveyed the animals around her—all different, but all at peace. Her face relaxed in a serene smile. “And everyone,” she continued, “no matter how odd their fingers, how strange their claws, or how numerous their eyes—will always be welcome.”
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Acknowledgements
Just as the beauty and humor of Dawn, Tobin, and Bismark reside in the nature of friendship and collaboration, so too does the joy of bringing their stories to life.
These qualities begin with Tracey Hecht, who has created a world both in The Nocturnals and at Fabled Films Press that is a wonder to inhabit. Tracey, as a mentor and friend, you have taught me more about the art of storytelling and the ways of life than should have been possible in one short year. I hope we share many more together, both creatively and beyond.
This book would not exist without my other colleagues in the writer’s room, Tommy Fagin and Sarah Fieber. Tommy, thank you for breaking me into this work with a steady stream of friendliness, counsel, and wit. Sarah, you have been a true friend, and you took The Fallen Star to the finish line with your leadership, guidance, and contributions when they were needed most.
Susan Lurie, our indefatigable editor, working with you is an honor; you constantly amaze me with your eye for narrative and your ability to push our team to new heights. Kate Liebman, our amazing illustrator, you turn our stories into the immersive adventures we strive for them to be.
The team behind The Nocturnals extends throughout all of Fabled as well. Stacey Ashton, if anyone is reading these words, you are a main reason why; likewise, thank you Michele Garza, Joe Gervasi, Lisette Farah, Jerry Li, Wiley Saichek, Erin Szczechowski, and Nicole Wheeler for all you do to connect us with our readers. Thanks also to Bailey Carr, Waymond Singleton, and the team at SJI, who animate these stories in their respective and respectively brilliant ways.
Finally, I’d like to briefly mention a creative team just beyond the one at Fabled: Asa, Brian, Daniel, Ian, and Lydia, you have lived with The Nocturnals just as much as I have, and the night world is better and richer with you in it. Finally, thank you to my grandmother, mother, and sister, the three women to whom this book is dedicated.
